Disk repair

[Alex Zbyslaw]

Richard Jones wrote:

>I have a disk which seems to have developed some faults or bad sectors.
>fsck yields the following:
>  
>
>>THE FOLLOWING DISK SECTORS COULD NOT BE READ: 50795409,
>>    
>>
>
>etc. there's about 4 sectors/blocks that can't be read. Now I know I
>should go and buy a new disk, but I just need this one to keep limping
>along for a month or so more.
>
>So my question is, how can I get the OS/BIOS to recognize the disk
>sectors as bad, and get over it?
>  
>
I believe that if it could get over it, it would already have done so.  
In fact, the disk may already have mapped out other bad sectors and run 
out of room to map any more.  What does SMART say?  
(sysutils/smartmontools).

You could try badsect(8), though I've never done it and it could be 
obsolete for all I know.

Try to keep running for another month if you like, but back up your data 
if you can and expect to lose the disk any time.  Show us the SMART info 
and maybe we could run a sweepstake ;-)

>And yes, I know I shouldn't be running non-Sun disks in a Sun box, but,
>well, it works most of the time :-)
>  
>
I've seen more than one sun disk die in a sun box.  A bad disk is just a 
bad disk, not a moral judgment :-)

--Alex